Heres another one to discuss.

Say youre walking to a crossing and want to cross. What do you do?

This is a very liberal question applying to any crossing and situation you can conceive, so there are dozens of answers.

For example in my case I am thinking of a few particular crossings. Usually I look to see if any cars are coming and what the traffic is doing. If it looks like there will be a gap to cross safely without pressing the button, I wont. Usually this is the case, as I hate to cross and then have the lights change when I am on the other side. Alternatively sometimes if the button has been pushed I refuse to cross till it goes green.

When I know I am going to push the button, if Im not in a hurry I usually also look to see what traffic is coming, and often wait till after any busses that are coming have passed.

Im curious whether anyone else has similar attitudes.

One other thing I do is if Im waiting for the lights to change, I refuse to start to cross until theyve changed AND the traffic has arrived and come to a stop. After watching a lady get hit in Guernsey when she stepped into the road when the lights went green to walk (stupid idiot of a driver tried to get through before the changed. She only got clipped but as he was doing 40 she still crumpled to the floor) - it drove it home that even if the lights are green, its not necessarily safe to cross. Theres been a few times where cyclists have decided the highway code doesnt apply to them either and Ive been so tempted to push them off their bikes.

And one final rambling thought is the other week I saw some lights which required the user to be stood on a specific tile to press the button. I think these are a great idea, as I assume the prevent the situations where someone presses the button and then crosses before the lights change.

i HATE people who press the button when they dont need to

I was on a date once, and she did that 3 times in a row on the way back to her place... when we got back to hers (it wasnt far) she invited me in ( )  but i didnt go in because I was so pissed off about the needless button pushing !

I hope you told her exactly why she didnt get it Knightly-Stylee that night too - brilliant - cant knock a man of principles

I always push the button unless there is nothing in sight.

youre a bit of a c**t then really

i bet if you were in a rush and someone did that to you, youd go f**king ballistic

The ones I really hate are zebra crossings right on top of roundabouts. Near my parents there is a triple roundabout with zebras on every exit and suicidal pedestrians who dont look before they run into the road.

They recently did this at my uni. Busy main road with a roundabout to turn down a side road which is the access to uni. They went and put zebras across literally on the corner of the roundabout. This of course has meant that theres been a shedload more near misses than before when people come round the roundabout to go to uni and then have to slam on the brakes because of the crossing, putting them directly in the way of the main flow of traffic.

What makes it worse is that these kinds of crossings usually have loads of alternatives. Within 100m there is not only a traffic light pedestrian crossing, but an underpass, and another zebra crossing but well away from the roundabout.


Theres another example I hate where theres a big school, and they put traffic light crossings across. There is also an overpass next to it. The obvious happens, no one uses the overpass, preferring to have the lights going nearly constantly, resulting in BIG traffic queues. What they need to do is get lollipop ladies out with a key or something which is the only way to activate the lights at school times. This way they can regulate how often they go. At the moment I find it such a waste of time/resources to have a lollipop lady/man stood at a crossing and essentially just pressing the button for the kids as they come up.